Introduction

This chapter shows how political might is accorded an ethical warrant, a warrant which dovetails with the long-observed romanticised, mythologised conceptualisation of leadership. It examines the evocation of religion in leadership discourse, both in the large volume of explicitly Christian texts aimed at business leaders and in the putatively secular Spiritual Leadership and Servant Leadership theories. The relationship of religion and the political in America is not a case of two hermitically sealed worlds simply coinciding either. The chapter considers distinctions between natural and moral evils, theodical justifications of evil both ancient and modern, and conceptualisations of radical versus banal evil. As J. Hackworth observes, ‘while there certainly are valid reasons for using a secular economic lens to understand neoliberalism’s rise as an intellectual project, Max Weber’s conceptual approach falls considerably short of explaining why the idea has political salience’. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.